Poetry, resistance, world-literature : Adília Lopes and Marie Buck

This essay begins an exploration of how poetry functions within the field of world-literature, drawing specifically on the Warwick Research Collective’s Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature and reflecting comparatively on the poetry of Adília Lopes and Marie Buck. Even though there are many differences between the two authors and their works, one common feature of their poetics is the deployment of poetry as a form of resistance. As such, both can be seen as especially significant so as to probe into the condition of poetry within a conceptualization of world-literature understood as the literature of the capitalist world-system. As the essay argues, both Adília Lopes and Marie Buck register specific conditions of oppression within a capitalist, patriarchal, society and offer ways to contest them

Broad Histogram: Tests for a Simple and Efficient Microcanonical Simulator

The Broad Histogram Method (BHM) allows one to determine the energy degeneracy g(E), i.e. the energy spectrum of a given system, from the knowledge of the microcanonical averages and of two macroscopic quantities Nup and Ndn defined within the method. The fundamental BHM equation relating g(E) to the quoted averages is exact and completely general for any conceivable system. Thus, the only possible source of numerical inaccuracies resides on the measurement of the averages themselves. In this text, we introduce a Monte Carlo recipe to measure microcanonical averages. In order to test its performance, we applied it to the Ising ferromagnet on a 32x32 square lattice. The exact values of g(E) are known up to this lattice size, thus it is a good standard to compare our numerical results with. Measuring the deviations relative to the exactly known values, we verified a decay proportional to 1/sqrt(counts), by increasing the counter (counts) of averaged samples over at least 6 decades. That is why we believe this microcanonical simulator presents no bias besides the normal statistical fluctuations. For counts~10**10, we measured relative deviations near 10**(-5) for both g(E) and the specific heat peak, obtained through BHM relation.Comment: 9 pages, plain tex, 3 PS figure

Broad Histogram: An Overview

The Broad Histogram is a method allowing the direct calculation of the energy degeneracy $g(E)$. This quantity is independent of thermodynamic concepts such as thermal equilibrium. It only depends on the distribution of allowed (micro) states along the energy axis, but not on the energy changes between the system and its environment. Once one has obtained $g(E)$, no further effort is needed in order to consider different environment conditions, for instance, different temperatures, for the same system. The method is based on the exact relation between $g(E)$ and the microcanonical averages of certain macroscopic quantities $N^{\rm up}$ and $N^{\rm dn}$. For an application to a particular problem, one needs to choose an adequate instrument in order to determine the averages $$and$$, as functions of energy. Replacing the usual fixed-temperature canonical by the fixed-energy microcanonical ensemble, new subtle concepts emerge. The temperature, for instance, is no longer an external parameter controlled by the user, all canonical averages being functions of this parameter. Instead, the microcanonical temperature $T_{m}(E)$ is a function of energy defined from $g(E)$ itself, being thus an {\bf internal} (environment independent) characteristic of the system. Accordingly, all microcanonical averages are functions of $E$. The present text is an overview of the method. Some features of the microcanonical ensemble are also discussed, as well as some clues towards the definition of efficient Monte Carlo microcanonical sampling rules.Comment: 32 pages, tex, 3 PS figure

Rich or poor: Who should pay higher tax rates?

A dynamic agent model is introduced with an annual random wealth multiplicative process followed by taxes paid according to a linear wealth-dependent tax rate. If poor agents pay higher tax rates than rich agents, eventually all wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of a single agent. By contrast, if poor agents are subject to lower tax rates, the economic collective process continues forever.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure